NOTE – This interview spoils some key gags and deaths in Feast 2. If you’re against spoilers, you should probably wait until you see the film before reading any further!

BD: Hey John...

JG: So did you see the movie yet?

BD: Yeah, I got it a bit late, so I had to turn it off to make our interview time. They just catapulted Grandma.

JG: Gulager (laughs). OK, you’re almost done.

BD: So I guess the biggest difference this time would be the lack of a camera crew following you around every step of the way... was it sort of weird to do a Feast movie without them around?

JG: Weirder than catapulting midgets? (laughs) Yeah, it made everything a lot easier in that respect. I don’t think we realized how much pressure all of those camera crews were putting on us until we DIDN’T have them around, on this one. So that was interesting. But the weird thing is, some people from Project Greenlight are part of our team now. Like my “B” camera operator on Feast 2, Alex Lehmann, was one of the guys following us around for the reality crew on the first movie. And some of the interns worked on Greenlight as well. Kind of weird. And then also, the guy who put together the EPK for the DVD – his mom plays grandma. We were having trouble finding the right actress down in Louisiana, and one day he came up and said “you know, I hate to do this... but you might want to look at my mom!” She used to do theater and stuff, and she was great. And when she’s wearing the goop and blood, that’s really her. So yeah, we still had camera crews, but they were, like, hidden...

BD: They were there when you WANTED them there.

JG: Exactly.

BD: The first one was written by Marcus and Patrick before they had even met you, but that was obviously not the case this time around. Did you work on the script with them or let them go off on their own?

JG: We kind of all did it together on this one. Marcus had the idea of them all wanting to get IN somewhere instead of OUT (like in the original). And I wanted to do it in the daytime, and in a few locations, instead of at night in one location. And then my dad wanted to get baby Clu [John’s nephew] in there, “We have to start his career now!”. So I said “OK, we’ll rescue a baby.” And then Marcus came up with, you know, what actually happens to the baby. And that kind of became the start of the whole thing. And also stuff on the internet: catapults and midgets and wrestling... the “world’s stupidest criminal” was the inspiration for what happens to Honey Pie. Things like that. And then there were all references to other movies; like the dog at the beginning? That’s from Yojimbo. But then of course we kill the dog.

BD: I caught the reference to The Thing...

JG: Well yeah, there’s always an autopsy in these movies. The characters are always like “Where did they come from?” “What are they?” “We’ll do an autopsy, and that’ll tell us everything we need to know about how to defeat them!” And by the time the movie’s over, they’ve developed a serum that kills the germs that causes the thing that does this and that, all in one night!!! (laughs) So that was the impetus for the autopsy scene. And then the wall falling down was a reaction to the first Feast, where they kept saying “the wall’s coming down!”. So of course, in this, the back wall comes down. And that’s sort of where the movie takes a left turn, goes off into Wonderland.

BD: With the blown out white void that they all run into...

JG: Yeah, exactly.

BD: I like that Clu is the last thing we see there.

JG: (laughs).

BD: Speaking of Clu, did he improv his lines? Seems like he has all the best lines in the movie.

JG: Let’s see.... “Don’t touch the dick!” is his line (laughs). He made T-Shirts for everybody that say: “Don’t touch the dick”. And the makeup guys blanked out “Don’t”, so they went out on the town with just “Touch the dick.” But no, a lot of them were scripted. Some weren’t, some dad just changes. Same as always. But that one was definitely his line.

BD: I haven’t gotten to the end credits yet; did the American Humane Assocation approve of this movie?

JG: (laughs) I wanted to put at the end, you know “No animals were hurt in this motion picture. Don’t ask about the dog. Don’t ask about the cat. Don’t ask about the baby. Don’t ask about the ants.” But no one thought that was a very good idea.

BD: One thing I love about the cat scene, Honey Pie is so used to seeing this shit that she barely reacts to this poor cat being raped by a monster; she’s kind of an old hand at this now.

JG: She does have the little rain tears running down her face, kind of like In Cold-

BD: In Cold Blood, right!

JG: She’s becoming a little numb to it all, yeah. In real life, we put Jenny Wade through the paces, and you can tell by the movie. She got banged up pretty bad, from day one. The very last stuff of hers in the movie is the stuff we shot on the first day there. She’s pretty dirty and icky, and she got stung by three bees. When she was doing the scene, she sat up and I thought she screamed “I got stuck in my pee!” And I was like “Wow that’s a really weird thing to say.” But she actually said “I got stung by a bee.” They were all going after the makeup, the corn syrup.

BD: Speaking of the makeup, I noticed that Gary Tunnicliffe did not return?

JG: Gary was doing the Pulse movies before ours, so he didn’t have time to work on the monsters. So he called a friend of his, Glenn Hetrick, who runs a company called Optic Nerve, and sent him all of the molds, and they made the monsters; the autopsy monster, the cat monster, and also another hybrid that’s in Feast 3. So they became the monster people. And actually, Mike Regan, who played the monster in Feast 1, is back playing the monsters in Feast 2, and a guy named Tim is one of the other monsters, and another guy named Vance came out to help, and he’s the hybrid monster in Feast 3. And you know Martin Klebba, who plays Thunder? He’s the cat monster. That’s him, groping Honey Pie’s boobs. If you look at it, slow it down... he’s totally cupping her breasts. But she’s pretty game, like I said, she got pretty banged up. When Marty, the cat monster is attacking her, that’s always her.

BD: Yeah, that was one of the scenes that made me realize it wasn’t the best movie to watch at work with coworkers nearby. Every 5 minutes it’s like “Minimize!”

JG: (laughs) The biker chicks...

BD: Exactly!

JG: Well the dilemma was, how do we get their clothes off? Well, the catapult of course! We kind of went between showing them shedding their clothes, and kind of just having someone point out that they were naked. I wanted the shock effect of them suddenly being naked, but I didn’t know if anyone would get it or not. I guess we weren’t too blatant about it. Hopefully people get it.

BD: So the DVD, it’s got some extras (a making of, a look at the whole Gulager acting clan, and a commentary – read full DVD review HERE!), but I didn’t see any deleted scenes... was everything you shot in the movie?

JG: We forgot to send it over, there’s a pretty funny scene of the monster pooping. When the little guys are running to the key shack, a monster is pooping in front of them, so they have to sort of press themselves against the wall. But when they run for the keys they slip in it, and it’s really really gross. But it kind of stopped the movie a bit, so we took it out. Maybe we can stick it on the Feast 3 DVD. Other than that, basically everything is in there. We didn’t have time to shoot too much stuff.

BD: So it was mostly shot in Louisiana, but you shot some in Los Angeles, right?

JG: We went out to the original location out in Lancaster, just past the Kill Bill church and stuff like that, and shot the opening scene in the exact same location. And that’s actually Diane driving the motorcycle there (though she did crash while she was learning), in the title sequence. And where she kills the dog, that’s where we shot the first movie. I liked the idea of shooting that much in the same place, even though it’s way the fuck out. And the rest was all in Plain Dealing, just north of Shreveport. And they kind of let us have our way with the town there. It’s not a hugely populated area... in fact, when I found it, on a Saturday, it was COMPLETELY empty, and I’m like “All right!”. But during the weekdays there were cars and stuff to deal with. Weekends though - no one there.

BD: Has Dimension said anything about a Blu-Ray release for either Feast 1 or 2?

JG: Feast 1 came out on HD, so I guess they would make a Blu-Ray of that. But I don’t know. Maybe they’ll just forget about it. I would guess eventually, but they’re doing the big titles first I guess.

BD: So how’s Feast 3 coming? Still editing?

JG: Editing, yeah. Just now getting to some of the music, effects being worked on... Maybe do a few pickup shots in the next couple weeks; normal course of finishing a movie. We’re spread out all over the country though, that’s the problem. Some people live in Austin; Marty’s in Michigan doing a movie, Honey Pie is in Canada doing Reaper... we’ll see how it goes. I think a lot of us are going to show up at Screamfest next week. We’ll see who can make it.

BD: What’s the approach of this one? Feast 1 is about getting out; Feast 2 is about getting in...

JG: This one starts out at the end of Feast 2, obviously. They want to escape out of town, but they end up going into the sewer. So they’re back in the darkness, and kind of crawling toward the city.

BD: Sewer should give you plenty of opportunities for more gross shit, literally...

JG: Well, we’ll see! They’re not huge storylines in Feast.

BD: And when does it come out?

JG: I think in February. Not really sure. Not too long from now though.

BD: So what is The Neighbor? IMDb says you have a finished movie...

JG: Neighbor right now isn’t happening. The original plan was to do it before these Feast movies. It got put on hold. If we did it, it would be pretty awesome. It’s got a bit of torture porn in it, mainly it’s just a violent, border type movie. It’s pretty neat. But it’s on hold, studio stuff. Something I want to do, something Marcus and Patrick want to do, it’s their script. We worked on it, and got it to a place where I thought it was pretty neat. I still hold out hope we’ll actually do it though.

BD: Well, that’s about it-

JG: You’re not going to ask about the penis?

BD: Ah, how could I forget!

JG: It was a prosthetic, for Lightning. And that was his first day of shooting, and he doesn’t speak any English. He’s a real luchadore, we’re not allowed to say who he is. He asked if we would not say who he was. Because in Mexico, it’s a big secret, who these guys are. They never take their masks off. I had interviewed him about ten years ago, when my friend was making a documentary on Lucho Libre. He didn’t remember me, but I remembered him. But yeah, he doesn’t speak any English. We had a translator, and Diane speaks fluent Spanish, so we were covered. He’s a tremendous actor. They all were.

BD: Yeah, and they really play off one another well.

JG: Well that’s the other thing. And then we kill them. You know, we don’t kill who you necessarily think we will. The black guy lives, even though he’s a jerk... stuff like that. But oh, watch through the credits!